2w ago

How does ads generate money for the ones who display it?

And couldn't I just fake the times someone saw my ads to get more money? How is that effective? As an advertiser do I have to just trust the ones seeking ad space?

9 comments

So, I sold Internet ads for a while. (I know, I'm not proud, but I had a family to feed.) We would sell packages of views.
Like, for $100 I could have your ad appear 20,000 times in a month. And for a little more, it would target a specific demographics like families with children, retired folks, or Republican homosexuals with cats. And for a little more, we could target those demographics in specific parts of the country. And for a little more we could target anyone who walked into your competitors location in the past 3 months. (If you took your phone anywhere, we knew it.)
I can't remember all the other targeting we had, but it got creepy.
- Republican homosexuals with cats. How much is that package 🤣🤣
- (If you took your phone anywhere, we knew it.)
  Is this because people have the location setting turned on or does it not matter?
  
  I wasn't involved in the tech end, so I imagine locking down your location settings could block some of it, but I wouldn't put it past Google or Apple to snag information from the mandatory 911 cell location.
  
  It does and it doesn't.
  Think of it like, there's dozens of different ways to get your location data, and maybe 90% of people will be exposed by one or other method.
They have a lot of bullshit metrics they use to try to operationalise how effective and valuable the ad was, thereby algorithmically pricing things. Certain things are more expensive to advertise, but it's all essentially self justifying bullshit imo.
They try to filter out people faking ad views. Precisely so that you don't get more money.
As an advertiser you usually don't talk directly to the people offering ad space but at an ad distributor like Google. They usually have techniques to minimise fraud. And often they offer to only take money for ads that actually lead to measurable goals. Then you wouldn't pay for views but for how often that goal was reached. Those ads are usually shown less often so they might be less attractive if your sales aren't exclusively online.
The marketing boss at one company explained it like this: "We're basically known by every potential customer in our field. We advertise often so that they don't get the impression we've ceased to exist." So for him targeted views were more important than immediate sales.
- "We're basically known by every potential customer in our field. We advertise often so that they don't get the impression we've ceased to exist."
  This is exactly true. I hate advertising, but there's no denying it works. As I heard one ad salesman say, "Do you really think there are people who don't know what Coke is? Yet, they never stop telling us. The only reason Coke ads still exist is to keep a Pepsi ad from being there."
  They assault us on a subconscious level. It doesn't matter if the commercial is funny or heart warming or horribly offensive. Anyone else getting thirsty? I sure could go for a Coke right now.
Easy, the ones displaying the ads have been paid to do so. Magazines of yesteryear have been replaced by websites, TV still follows the same model, but has probably been outpaced by the scale of ads online. Billboards are probably the only one unaffected, and the people who lease the space to erect the billboard charge their customers for the right to have their ad displayed, just the same as any of the others above. Want your ad in my magazine, on my TV channel, webpage, Youtube? Pay for the privilege.

9 comments